Boohbahs
The Boohbahs are a group of furry "atoms" of energy, power, and light. Bio Upon waking up from a slumber inside of their ladle-like pods in the magical, luminous Boohball, the colourful, energetic Boohbahs spring to life, dancing and flying away in the massive, colourful Boohzone. They enjoy to do many sorts of physical activity, like jumping, bumping, shaking, spinning, falling, bouncing, and flying, and are powered by the laughter of children playing with them. Appearance The most prominent part of a Boohbah's body is a large, round belly; a Boohbah is so fat that sometimes, its flab jiggles as it exercises or dances. Its body is very soft and fuzzy from neck to toe and sparkles with light. It has thick guts around its stomach area, cone-shaped arms and legs, and three-fingered hands at the tips of its arms. Each Boohbah has an arch-shaped head with two big brown eyes, which click when moved to either direction, two arches of lights acting as their eyebrows, which they light up to communicate, and tiny bumps all over the top of their forehead and on the sides of their head. In-between their eyes is a tiny nose and below them are their 'freckles'. List of Boohbahs Each Boohbah is a different colour and has its own unique name, which are the only ways to tell each one apart; its front side is a bright shade of its base colour, while its back is a darker shade of the same colour. There are five Boohbahs: * Humbah (played by Emma Insley) * Zumbah (played by Alex Poulter) * Zing Zing Zingbah (played by Cal Jaggers) * Jumbah (played by Phil Hayes) * Jingbah (played by Laura Pero) Characteristics The Boohbahs are energetic and hyperactive. They are very active and do all sorts of exercises and dances, but one of their most notable (and peculiar) traits is the ability to fly. In three portions of an episode, they soar up to the centre of the Boohzone and float either downward or upward, holding hands together in a circle like skydivers. While in this position, the Boohbahs do their "power hum": each one "sings" a musical note and sends a beam of light toward a central point (usually the Boohball). Depending on when they do the hum, they can either end up flying all over the place, disappearing into the Boohball before briefly reappearing to run around the Storypeople's present, or going back into the ball to lower and nestle into their pods. To express emotion, the Boohbahs move their eyes around (they can only move them to the left, right, or straight ahead) or hide their heads by retracting them into their hollow necks. They do not have mouths and cannot speak (the only other onscreen characters, the Storypeople, can't speak either, even though they do have mouths), so they instead communicate by emitting noises such as squeals, flatulent "air-bellowing" noises, and squeaks. According to Anne Wood, the sounds they make when they move are all part of their fun and contribute to their supposedly infectious appeal to children who are drawn irresistibly to get up and move with them. Trivia * The Boohbahs' eyebrows were inspired by a blown-up postcard picture of a girl with two arches of dots embedded over her eyesAmanda Mitchison, "The mother of all Boohbahs", The Telegraph, 10 March, 2004. * The Boohbahs' heads look very similar to Kewpie dolls, which too have an arch-shaped head and large eyes; however, their eyes are much bigger than that of a Kewpie, they have no hair and mouths, and they have arches of lights for eyebrows. * On the now-defunct "expert questions-and-answers" section of the PBS Parents website, Anne Wood says the Boohbahs' air-bellowing noises (which are often referred to as 'flatulence') are similar to air blasting out of a balloon. * The Boohbahs are the only characters to consistently appear in every episode of the show, and are always the first and last recurring characters to appear onscreen. They also always appear together, while all of the Storypeople have appeared together just once. * Although Boohbah is meant to get viewers at home to exercise, the Boohbahs are overweight. It is unknown why this is, but most likely to make the characters big enough to attract small viewers' attention. * Most of the Boohbahs' names start with one prefix (like "jum-" or "zum-"), but Zing Zing Zingbah's name has three "zing-"s. * Although they are officially said to be identical in sizeAnswers to questions asked by Ryan Bannon to Ragdoll Productions in May 2019 (compiled by Andrea Nyul) (and the renders often seen on Boohbah merchandise and press material seem to reflect this claim), the Boohbahs are in actuality slightly different sizes (this is most likely because of the actors playing them being different sizes themselves): Zumbah is the tallest Boohbah, Jumbah is the second tallest, Jingbah and Humbah are approximately the same size, and Zing Zing Zingbah is the smallest. * The colours of the light beams the Boohbahs emit while doing their power hum are different; when performing the hum upon entering the Boohzone, each beam is a variation of the Boohbah's base colour (except Humbah's, which is cyan, and Zing Zing Zingbah's, which is yellow). When the Boohbahs do the hum again after doing their warm-up (and when they go back to the Boohball), Humbah and Zing Zing Zingbah's beams are cyan, Jingbah and Zumbah's beams are green, and Jumbah's beam is orange. * In a Sprout Diner short based on Boohbah, it is implied that the Boohbahs' favourite foods are "ShiskaBoohbahs", but it is unknown if (and how) a Boohbah can consume food without a visible mouth on its face. * The Boohbahs are scarcely, if ever, represented in Storyworld; because the Storypeople and the Boohbahs are two entirely different species and live in different universes (the Boohzone and Storyworld), they have never met or interacted with each other. The narrator who tells us what is going on in Storyworld is also absent from the Boohbah sequences. * The Boohbahs are always spinning a lot (they whirl around frequently whenever they run amok, one of their warm-ups involves twirling to either direction, they often go into a spinning and/or bumping frenzy at certain points during their dances (and one dance has them doing nothing but), and even their pods are spun around by the Boohball's floor), but they don't seem to get highly dizzy from all the spinning they do. Behind the Scenes The Boohbahs were designed and built by costume designer Vin Burnham, who once said that they were unlike anything she had made prior to working on Boohbah"Creature Comforts", The Stage, 26 June, 2003. The exterior of the costume's body was covered in thousands of ruffled bits of light, glittery fabric hand-painted different shades of each Boohbah's base colour (the costumes were originally supposed to be covered in a material similar to artificial turf; although this did not work, Wood liked them so much that she hung two slabs of these coverings on one of her office's walls). The interior was wired up with 500 tiny lights, giving the body its shimmery look; the costume was fattened up using a lightweight frame. The costumes' heads, which were designed by one of the prop makers (most likely Jim Sandys), were equipped with a pair of large, realistic-looking animatronic eyes (which were most likely remote-controlled) and ten small lights. The head was situated slightly higher than where the performer's head would be, which makes sense from a technical standpoint as his/her head would be too big to fit inside the costume's light and mechanism-filled head comfortably. In some segments, a mesh of material the same colour as the Boohbah's body is visible inside its neck, suggesting that the head was attached to an undersuit the performer wore while inside the costume; this undersuit may have enabled the wearer to manipulate the Boohbah's head by lifting or lowering his/her own head. The costumes were flown using Kirby rigsVin Burnham's reply to a comment made by Ryan Bannon on her Instagram account, April 2019, and - when fully assembled - measured approximately six feet tall. Gallery Charger.png|The Boohbahs sleeping in their pods Skydive position.PNG|The Boohbahs send beams of light toward the Boohzone's pit Snapshot 6 (13-05-2019 7-24 PM).png|The Boohbahs with their heads retracted Snapshot 7 (13-05-2019 7-27 PM).png|The Boohbahs flying toward the Boohball after their warm-up Skydive position 2.PNG|The Boohbahs send beams of light toward the Boohball Snapshot 9 (13-05-2019 7-29 PM).png|The Boohbahs going into the Boohball Bouncing.png|The Boohbahs doing a bouncing dance Push_and_Pull.png|The Boohbahs holding their hands together in a line Wobbling.png|The Boohbahs doing a "wobbly" dance Scrunching_and_Stretching.png|The Boohbahs scrunched up small on the floor Lift_Your_Feet_to_the_Beat.png|The Boohbahs lifting their legs Snapshot 8 (13-05-2019 7-28 PM).png|The Boohbahs leave their pit - and the ground - on their way out of the Boohzone Snapshot 15 (13-05-2019 8-18 PM).png|The Boohbahs - out of their pods - suspending inside the Boohball Boohbahs in the boohball.PNG|The Boohbahs floating inside the Boohball in a different formation Boohbahs in the boohball 2.PNG|The Boohbahs floating inside the Boohball in a quincunx formation Poll Who is your favourite Boohbah? Humbah Zumbah Zing Zing Zingbah Jumbah Jingbah References Category:Boohzone Category:Characters Category:Animals Category:Character groups